Shawn Green was driving back to Orange County from Stanford University, where he had dropped his youngest daughter off for her freshman year of college, when the text messages began pouring in.
“My phone started blowing up,” the former Dodgers slugger said, “so it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on.”
Green set a Dodgers franchise single-season record with 49 home runs in 2001, but as he approached the Southern California basin Thursday afternoon, Shohei Ohtani had tied that mark with a two-run homer to right-center field in the sixth inning of an eventual 20-4 postseason-clinching victory over the Miami Marlins in LoanDepot Park.